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Tag: final fantasy xi

Last month saw the release of the final chapter in Final Fantasy XI’s latest add-on scenario, Rhapsodies of Vana’diel. This scenario marks the end of all new storyline/expansion content for the game. In the eyes of most players, Rhapsodies’ serves as a sunset for a game that has been loved for over a decade. As promised, I have taken the last few months to catch up on much of the content I’ve missed over the last few years and I have to say, now that the final chapter has been told, I’m glad I took the time to give this wonderful game one last look.

For veteran players who have already conquered most of the game’s content, Rhapsodies of Vana’diel will serve as both a trip down memory lane, and a final capstone to all of the epic storylines that FFXI has presented over the years. Between the three chapters in Rhapsodies, Square Enix has done a wonderful job of bringing back old characters from the various ages of Final Fantasy XI and blending them in to one final romp through the various locales of this vast game. For new players, the Rhapsodies content actually integrates into the existing storyline as players explore the content in the game. It serves as both a guide and a vehicle to clarify some of the more obscure parts of the game’s scenarios.

Aside from simply being a collection of cutscenes and battles, RoV also introduces three new zones to the game. Admittedly, two of these are largely recolors/remixes of existing areas. The third, however, is an entirely new zone and one that players have been begging to explore for many years. I suppose the inclusion of this area is small way of saying “Thank You” to players who have stuck through the game over all the ups and downs.

I was fortunate enough to experience RoV along with a few of my old FFXI friends. But thankfully, the scenario is also quite solo-able thanks to the new Trust system in the game that allows to you make make virtual parties with AI controlled NPCs. So if you’re on the fence about returning to Vana’diel to experience this swansong, don’t be. The content is very accessible even if you have to play through it alone.

As I mentioned in one of my previous XI posts, stepping back into this world after being gone for a couple of years felt both familiar and foreign at the same time. So much has changed with Final Fantasy XI since it’s prime that it did take a little getting used to. Yet, it didn’t take long for everything to start falling into place. If you’re one the fence about returning, know this: Yes, the game is much easier than it used to be. Content that used to require alliances of players can now be conquered alone. Yes, the population of the game is significantly smaller than it used to be. But the players that remain have a true love and passion for the game that is undying.

I would find it difficult to recommend FFXI as a whole, to a new player simply because it has reached its sunset period. But if you are a true fan of Final Fantasy, or if you have a friend who is also interested in playing, it is certainly worth spending a little time exploring this world. Personally, I have played countless games over the years, a majority of them RPGS. I have also dabbled in nearly every MMO on the market and I can say this with no hesitation: Final Fantasy XI is without a doubt the greatest game I have ever played in my life. It certainly has it faults, but I doubt that another game (even FFXIV) will ever be able to take its place in my heart.

As a final treat, players who complete Rhapsodies of Vana’diel are rewarded with a final cutscene and credit roll. The song that plays in the background features a chorus sang by the players of the game itself. A few months back, SE provided instructions for recording audio that could be sent back to SE for inclusion in the mix of the final song. I found this to be a touching gesture and nice way to immortalize the loyal players by placing them into the game itself once and for all.

In March of 2013, Final Fantasy XI saw what would end up being it’s final full expansion ever: Seekers of Adoulin. Announced at a time when players had accepted the expectation that their beloved game had been all but abandoned, the news that XI would be a getting a new expansion came as quite a shock. SoA was more than players could have ever asked for. But it’s release was not without controversy. First off, this new scenario saw a number of big changes to the game. First, this expansion was the first in the west not to be available on PlayStation 2. SoA is only available on PC and Xbox 360 for US players. While this may seem trival due to the small number of US PS2 players, it is a still a big reversal from SE’s previous stance regarding PS2 support.

This expansion adds access to a whole new continent. The land of Ulbuka is located across the ocean to the west. It is a bit of a “new world” much like the Americas of Earth. In fact, one of the main focuses of the new storyline is participating in the pioneering of the undiscovered country. Players are able to participate in activities such a “rieves” and coalition assignments that explore the untamed wilds of the new land. Included in this expansion are two new jobs: The Geomancer and the Rune Fencer. These are somewhat trivial in their addition, but the new options are certainly welcome.

When it comes to content, Seeker’s is an expansion almost exclusively aimed at endgame players. SoA has adopted a new “item level” system much like that found in FFXIV to help players gauges the value of new level 99 equipment. Some older pieces can be upgraded to higher items levels, but most of the new gear is obtainable through participation in SoA-exclusive content, such a Delve. Delve is a new super-challenging battle system that focuses on notorious monster battles. It’s extremely difficult, but the rewards are well worth it.

Aside from the usual expansion-type content, Seekers of Adoulin also ushered in a wave of core-game changes that would forever alter the way Final Fantasy XI was played. The Mog Garden was introduced. This features a small little private island where players can gather and cultivate materials. Players can now farm and gather from one simply location instead of scouring the landscape looking for places and competing with other players. The expansion included a new “waypoint” system that allowed players to warp around certain areas of the game world. This concept was later extended to existing homepoints. Players can now warp to any homepoint in the game that they’ve previously visited. This removed a giant pain-point for players and has really helped to modernize Final Fantasy XI. On top that, a whole new system called “Records of Eminence” has been added to the game. This is a sort of sub-system of in-game achievements and rewards. Players are rewarded points and experience for completing certain in-game objectives. The points can be redeemed for almost anything; gear, skill ups, etc. This is very helpful considering the scarcity of items on the auction house these day. Not to mention, the experience points granted by completing objectives is great indeed. Making leveling now even faster than ever.

Shortly after the release of SoA, the ability to summon and party with NPC “alter egos” was also added. This is called the “Trust System”. Now players are able to form their own parties with NPCs instead of spending hours recruiting other members for content. While this is a welcome change, in a way it saddens me. It, along with the Records of Eminence system mentioned above, is a silent indication that the game’s population has become low enough to be addressed by the development team.

All in all, Seekers is a very welcome additional to XI. It added plenty of new areas for players to explore, as well as provided challenging and fresh activities for the game’s aging playerbase. Over the course of this last month, I reactivated my subscription and actually spent quite a bit of time exploring the post-Seekers world of Vana’diel. I participated in the new Trust initiative, reconnected with some old friends, conquered some old content on my to-do list and really got a taste for the way the game has changed.

As I mentioned earlier, Seekers of Adoulin is officially the final full expansion for Final Fantasy XI, so my little nostalgia trip will soon be coming to a close. I’ll be making one more post regarding the game itself by the end of the year upon the completion of the Rhapsodies of Vana’diel add-on that is being released for free. This new content is being rolled out between now and November. Until that time, I will leave my subscription active and continue to enjoy the experience that is Final Fantasy X – quite possibly the greatest video game I have ever played. I don’t make that claim lightly.

Two years after Wings of the Goddess, FFXI players were getting antsy for new content. Square Enix had already announced a new MMO in the Final Fantasy series and many players were concerned that their long loved game was slowly being abandoned. Finally in 2009, SE announced three small “downloadable scenarios” for Final Fantasy XI: A Crystalline Prophecy, A Moogle Kupo d’Etat, and A Shantotto Ascension. These mini-expansions were scattered out over a period of several months, and were sold for $10 each. Essentially, these were nothing more than a small series of storyline missions, each ending with a boss battle and selectable item reward.

The new content was certainly welcome, but these scenarios seemed a little weak in terms of what fans had come to expect. Luckily, fans were in for a very big surprise in the near future…

As news for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV became more and more prevalent, FFXI players were now even more worried than before. Rumors began to circulate that FFXI services may come to a close as SE turned their attention to FFXIV instead. Many players waited for the 2010 VanaFest (Final Fantasy XI convention) with dread. To be honest, I was one of them. But, thankfully, our fears were put to rest.

I remember staying up all night to watch the VanaFest stream online. SE was quick to reassure players that there was no end to Final Fantasy XI in the foreseeable future. They followed this announcement with a presentation about upcoming job changes within the game. As they began the presentation, I recall them showing a video of a level 75 Red Mage doing battle in one of the areas outside of Aht Urhgan. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until suddenly, the Red Mage gained a level. It took the audience a second to register this… before the entire room erupted in applause. Square Enix had just announced the first level cap increase to the game since the North American release. This changed everything.

Not only did SE announce that they would up the level cap past 75 (a feat with itself would change the very core-design of the game), but they would eventually be taking the cap all the way to level 99! To assist with this, they announced the release of three new “battlefield add-on scenarios”: Vision of Abyssea, Scars of Abyssea, and Heroes of Abyssea.

These scenarios would take players into an extra-dimensional area “Abyssea”, that essentially served as training grounds and battle areas to help level jobs from 75 to 99. Not only that, but to go along with the new level caps, a slew of new gear and job abilities were going to be released and tweaked over time. Finally the future of FFXI was looking bright again. Player excitement has hit a new high.

Despite the initial excitement, upon its release Abyssea became a very controversial part of the game. While it certainly proved a great way to level jobs from 75-99, players were able to enter the areas with jobs as low as level 30. Naturally, players were able to “think outside of the box” and Abyssea became a way to power-level jobs from level 30 to level 99 in mere days. This is a task that would normally have taken months or weeks previously. On top of that, FFXI found itself with a new producer as the development staff was being shuffled around between various projects at SE. The new development team made a number of changes that made leveling even easier. The age of casual gaming had finally reached Final Fantasy XI. Over the span of about six months, Final Fantasy XI went from being a notoriously “hardcore” game to have the easy-button pressed. Fans began to express discontent and subscriptions slowly started to decline. Even I, ended up eventually cancelling my subscription for the first time ever upon the release of Final Fantasy XIV… FFXI had changed and it wasn’t clear if the change was for the best.

I had fully expected the Abyssea add-ons to be the last updates to the game. Perhaps they would have been, but something happened that SE never anticipated. Once Final Fantasy XIV was released, it failed – miserably. While SE has announced their intentions to fix and rebuild their new MMO, they had to do something in the meantime to keep the money rolling in. Naturally, they turned their attention back to the one game that had proved to be their most profitable venture ever; Final Fantasy XI…

Merely a year after the ToAU expansion was released, players of Final Fantasy XI were treated to yet another expansion: Wings of the Goddess. For me, this was a release that I was really looking forward to. By the time WotG reached the store shelves, the game was in it’s prime but was starting to show its age a bit. Despite this, it still had a very large and loyal fanbase. Even if the game was beginning to receive a lot of criticism for being too grindy and antiquated. Other MMOs like World of Warcraft were starting to siphon players, so for many, the content in Wings of the Goddess was expected to address that.

You see, along with the usual content one would expect from a FFXI expansion, SE had also promised several new gameplay/battlefield systems to make earning experience both different and easier. The main focus here was the new Campaign system. But we’ll touch on that in a moment. First, let’s talk a bit about the concept behind the new expansion.

Wings of the Goddess, goes back to the roots of the Final Fantasy XI story; The Crystal War. This war is an event that took place approximately twenty years prior to the start of the game. It is often mentioned by NPCs in game and is quite a big part of the game’s lore. Now, with the new expansion, players are finally able to travel back in time and participate in the war itself! In the weeks leading up to the release of the expansion, strange stone “cavernous maws” began appearing all over the game world. Upon activation of Wings of the Goddess, players could enter one of these and be transported back to the age of the Crystal war.

Once in the past, players will be able to align themselves with one of the three nations again and begin to participate in various war-time operations. Be it battle, or random tasks, players were finally able to earn experience points as a quest-based reward and not directly through the defeat of monsters in the game. As mentioned above, one of the most popular new systems in this expansion is the Campaign system. Essentially, Campaign is the participation on the front lines of battle. The player will take part in a mass assault against multiple waves of Beastmen. You can see the battle through to the end, or check out early if need be. Either way, your performance during the battle will be assessed and you will be rewarded Experience. While this may sound a bit mundane these days, at the time it was a big change for Final Fantasy XI.

Naturally, players are able to move between that past and the present. In fact, several quests included in WotG require players to do just that with often paradoxical results. Another example of this has to do with the introduction of a new free-roaming “monster”, the Pixie. The days of the Crystal War, Pixies are quite common. But they had never been seen in the game prior to the WotG release. If players kill a large number of Pixies in the past, this remains unchanged. But, if player spare these creatures, they will begin to appear in the modern game as well. I always felt that was a clever concept.

As you might expect, due to the whole time travel concept behind the expansion, many of the new zones are nothing more than alternate versions of areas already in the game. There’s a couple of exceptions but for the most part, this is the case. This led many players to feel ripped off. Their claim was that SE was charging full price for mostly “remixed zones”. Personally, I don’t share this point of view. To me, the crystal-era zones are quite different from their modern-era counterparts. And personally, I enjoy exploring the subtle differences.

Naturally, the expansion also came with a new set of storyline missions as well as two new jobs: Dancer and Scholar. Interesting jobs in theory, but these two new additions seems to get most of the action as subjobs – as their abilities seems more geared towards the support of other roles rather than as a stand out on their own.

A number of other systems were included with WotG; a new Notorious Monster system, for one. But the most popular may have been the new Walk of Echoes battlefield. This is another large-scale battlefield, but instead of being main content, Walk of Echoes is considered to be the “end game” content of WotG. In Walk of Echoes, players will fight waves of powerful monsters in an extra-dimensional battlefield. At the time, the rewards for this content were quite good, but these days they are subpar. Thus, this content is largely ignored by modern players.

All in all; Wings of the Goddess is a fun and interesting expansion for Final Fantasy XI. It adds plenty of welcome content, but it again falls just a bit short of the epic reputation that the very first two expansions brought to the game.

Spring of 2006 brought the third expansion to Final Fantasy XI; Treasures of Aht Urhgan. This release added a whole new continent to explore, along with the addition of three new Advanced Jobs: Corsair, PuppetMaster and Blue Mage. The new areas included in ToAU all had an Arabian flair to them which was a vast departure from the standard “high fantasy” feel of the rest of the game. This certainly helped to give the expansion a feeling of something new and original.

In the weeks leading up to the release of the expansion, three new NPCs appeared in the city states. These NPCs served as a bit of a hook to help set the stage for the storyline in the upcoming expansion. Each NPC was a recruiting officer for a mercenary guild in the mid-eastern Empire of Aht Urhgan. The quest offered by them provided a reward that the player could cash in for some perks upon reaching the Aht Urhgan city of Whitegate.

On the day the expansion went live, I firmly remember standing on the docks of one of the lesser outpost towns in the game, with about 100 other people, waiting for the boat to arrive that would usher us to the new wondrous city. Sure, we had all seen the promotional artwork, but none of us really knew what to expect when arrived.

The main storyline included with ToAU involved the struggles of the Aht Urghan Empire against new races of beastmen. Within walls of the empire resides a national treasure: The Astral Candescence. The beastment vie to capture this artifact. As a result, the Empire has recently come under attack and has enlisted companies of mercenaries to help defend against the recent onslaughts. The new storyline missions in the game involve the player joining up with one of these rather shady companies and uncovering the secrets of the Empire as a result.

Unlike the Chains of Promathia expansion, which only really catered to the endgame community, the content in Aht Urhgan became accessible for even mid-level adventurers. This resulted in many changes. The population shifted from hanging out mostly in the hub-town of Jeuno, to the new city of Al Zahbi/Whitegate. This became the hotspot of the game. Along with this, players soon discovered new areas in which to set up camp for experience parties. Several of the older stomping grounds became largely neglected as a result.

With the addition of new storyline missions, ToAU also featured two new popular activities: Assaults and Besieged. Assaults were short quest based objectives that saw players invading and ransacking beastmen outposts in the new areas. Completion of these assaults grants the player both points and over time helps increase their rank within mercenary company. Points can be redeemed for a variety of goods. Besieged is very much the opposite or assaults. This is when the beastmen invade Al Zahbi and players must participate in the defense of the city.

Along with these activities came a number of other changes to the game. A chocobo raising and racing system was added, several new battlefield systems: Salvage, Einherjar, and Pankration. New “mythic weapons” and other special armor sets were also added.

Much like the previous expansion, ToAU also features another Super Boss: Pandemonium Warden. Again infamous for nearly 20 hour fights, this battle placed SE under the media spotlight for encouraging “unhealthy playing practices”. These days, PW is still considered to be quite a challenge to defeat, but the difficulty has been reduced significantly.

All in all, ToAU is a good expansion and certainly worth the original price tag. It offered plenty of new content and gave the players a new story and new areas to explore. But compared with the epic scope of the first two expansions, I feel that it overall falls just a little short in comparison. That being said, it has become an integral part of the game and no player should go without it.

About a year after Final Fantasy XI reached the shores of the USA, the Chains of Promathia expansion pack was released. In between the time that I first played the game and CoP became available, my personal life had undergone quite a few changes. I changed careers, bought a house, and had a child. But by this time, things were starting to settle down. CoP was released in September 2004, and after several months of seeing the box on the shelf at my local store, I decided to purchase it and see what the world of FFXI was like these days. This second experience with the game is when I became a full blown FFXI Junkie.

Chains of Promathia is an Expansion Pack in the most literal sense of the phrase. This package did exactly that, it expanded upon the original game without making too many core changes. CoP, as it is often called, added new areas and an epic-scale storyline that wove tightly in with that from Rise of the Zilart. In fact, the two expansions actually tie into each other at the very end.

The storyline in this expansion plays heavily off the fictional religious lore in FFXI, and takes players to a weird alien-like plane called Promyvion. It is also in this expansion that players finally get to visit areas of the game only previously seen in the opening cutscene. The amount of content in CoP was unlike anything else at the time. MMO games simply did not contain storyline content of this caliber. Upon the addition of all of the Promathia content, Final Fantasy XI had become legendary with online gamers.

The content added in Chains of Promathia was infamous for being expert-only level content. This missions and battles added with this scenario were brutal and required a group of players to be at the top of their game. These days, many changes to the game have made completing Chains of Promathia much easier. But in it’s prime, CoP was the reason that Final Fantasy XI was often hailed as the most hardcore MMO on the market.

In a way, you can look at Chains of Promathia as the “optional dungeon” from any given Final Fantasy title. Most FF games contain optional areas and bosses that are more challenging than the rest of the game. A good example of this is the CoP battle with a monster called Absolute Virtue. This monster was notoriously difficult to defeat. In fact, many players believed that the boss was added to the game as a unbeatable challenge. Battles against AV required an alliance of players, and it was not unheard of for teams to battle this monster for upwards of 10+ hours, often sharing accounts and taking shifts in combat. The first few times the monster was defeated, it was discovered that players had exploited the game in one way or another. Then, some rather ingenious players managed to legitimately defeat the monster by thinking outside of the box – ( for those in the know: using an alliance of Dark Knights all wielding a special weapon that enabled them to hit 8 times per turn). Since SE apparently had a specific strategy in mind when designing this monster, they applied a fix to nix this Dark Knight zerg, and would continue to do so for most kill-strats that popped up.

Eventually, the hype behind this monster became so great that Square Enix had to address it publicly. In one instance, a group of players flailed away at the monster for over 18 hours, some of the them becoming physically ill during the marathon session. When pressed for an response, SE explained that players had simply not discovered the secret to defeating the monster. To resolve this, they released a hint video on YouTube and placed a 2 hour time-limit on the fight. They also slightly lowered the difficulty of the encounter. Despite this, victory against Absolute Virtue was still hailed as one of the greatest achievements in MMO gaming for several years to come. – These days, the battle is much much easier thanks to an increased level cap and several other changes to the overall game design. For the record: To this day, I personally, have never defeated this monster.

As I mentioned at the beginning, it was during this time in the game’s history that Final Fantasy XI changed to from simply being a video game that I enjoyed to an actual full-time hobby. I would play this game for an average of 2-3 hours a night, usually 4-5 days a week. While that may seem vigorous to many, this schedule still left me in the category of the casual player. The “elite” playerbase would often play for 8+ hours a day, seven days a week. Their lives would be scheduled around the game, and not the other way around. I enjoy Final Fantasy and I can totally understand having a minor obsession with a game. Heck, I loved FFXI so much that I would listen to the game soundtrack or podcasts dedicated to discussing the game, while I worked at my job. But, I would never allow a game to take over my life like some people. I had often heard about people becoming addicted to MMOs, and I saw it firsthand with FFXI. On top of that, many of these elitest players carry very negative attitudes. To them, if you’re not on their level, you are worthless. On more than one occasion, I was excluded from participating in certain events because I was a “filthy casual”. Sadly, elitist attitudes tend to thrive in online environments. MMO games are no exception.

On the other side of the coin, I met people in Final Fantasy XI that were truly amazing. Teaming up to conquer the content in Chains of Promathia formed bonds with people I had never met in person, but yet still communicate with today in some form or another. I owed my progress in Chains of Promathia to the many friends that made during those months after picking up that box and re-installing the game on my PC. After experiencing the content CoP had to throw at us, we were all looking forward to exploring the future of the game together.

Before I start talking about the game that is Final Fantasy XI, I want to first talk a bit about the software behind it. Final Fantasy XI is an online game. Unlike all of the previous entries in the series, it requires an active internet connection. The game client resides on your computer or console, but interacts with a remote server that “Serves up” the action and events in the game itself. FFXI was released in 2002, during what some still consider to be the early days of mainstream internet usage. During this time, Squaresoft launched an online portal of sorts called PlayOnline. This was intended to be both a website and a suite of online solutions for their future games. For this most part, this initiative was a flop. The PlayOnline service never really took off as intended. Today, it exists only because it serves as a launchpad for Final Fantasy XI itself.

To play Final Fantasy, you must also install a software based launcher called the PlayOnline Viewer. The viewer not only serves as a portal to the game itself but also hosts a number of other features. The viewer also serves as a friendlist, email client, and chatroom. Alerts about the game, patch notes, and links to helpful information are also presented in the viewer. In the early days, aside from Final Fantasy XI, you can also launch a special online version of Tetra Master from the POL viewer (the card game from Final Fantasy IX). However, now in the US, this service has been discontinued.

As I mentioned before, these days the POL viewer really only serves as a launcher to Final Fantasy XI, but you can tell that at one time, Square really had some big plans for the service. You can customize the background music, send greeting cards, download wallpaper and even read a game-based newsletter all through the viewer. Sadly, this newsletter hasn’t been updated in years. But I always looked forward to reading the lore and little stories included in it. Also worth mentioning; at one time was even an optional pay-based service that expanded the abilities of the friends list to allow for access away from the game itself. But this functionality has also since been dropped.

It may seem odd to make a whole post discussing something as mundane as a game launcher, but for a dedicated fan of Final Fantasy XI, the POL Viewer became sort of a ritual. You had to start it to play the game, and every time you loaded it up you were treated to a familiar musical jingle that reminded your brain; “It is Final Fantasy XI Time!” Yes… the navigation menus were annoying. Yes, the screens are slow to load. And yes, I’ve read the message reminding me not to “abandon my friends, my family, and my work” 1,000 times. But, there’s something about the whole thing that is warm and familiar.

Continuing with my Final Fantasy series playthrough, we are brought to an interesting entry. Final Fantasy XI. The first online massive multiplayer game in the franchise. I’ve mentioned before, that I don’t like to “review” MMO games. This is because the content of the game itself changes rapidly and, as a player, your overall experience can often be influenced by other players, not just the game itself. Therefore, I will not be offering a proper review of the game, but rather I will provide information and share my personal experiences with the title.

At the time of this writing, Final Fantasy XI is already thirteen years old and thus, has a vast and complicated history. There is much to write about and no way to fit it all into one post. So, over the next few weeks I’ll be making multiple posts, all of them will linked here to this master “hub post”. Stay tuned!